The Pembrokeshire Pubs Worth Planning a Walk Around

Pembrokeshire has around 150 pubs for a population of 125,000, and the good ones are rarely the convenient ones. What follows isn't a ranking of beer quality — it's a list of pubs where the setting is the reason to go, and where the walk to get there is part of the point.

The tidal one

The Old Point House, Angle. Reached by a track across the salt marsh on East Angle Bay that the highest tides cut off completely. That's not a quirk the pub apologises for; it's the whole character of the place. Thick walls, low ceilings, and a view across the Haven to the refineries — which sounds wrong and looks extraordinary at dusk. Check the tide table, not just the opening hours.

The quarry harbours

The Sloop Inn, Porthgain has been serving since 1743, when Porthgain was shipping slate and crushed stone out of a harbour barely wider than a tennis court. The brick hoppers still stand above the water. Walk the cliff from Abereiddi and the Blue Lagoon — about 45 minutes each way — and the Sloop is the obvious finish.

The Shed, Porthgain, forty metres away, is a seafood bistro in the old machine shop rather than a pub, but the two together make Porthgain the best short walk-and-lunch in north Pembrokeshire.

Harbour pubs

The Harbour Inn, Solva puts tables out by the boats, and at high water the inlet fills right up to the wall. The Griffin Inn, Dale sits on the seafront of the sunniest village in Wales, with the anchorage in front of it. The Swan Inn, Little Haven is on the sea wall above the slipway — the sunset pub of St Brides Bay, and busy for exactly that reason from about seven o'clock in July.

The Coast Path stops

The Stackpole Inn is the natural refuel after Barafundle Bay and the Bosherston lily ponds — a proper dining pub rather than a walkers' shelter, so book at weekends. The Lobster Pot, Marloes is the one pub within reach of Marloes Sands and the Skomer boat, which makes it either convenient or essential depending on your timing.

The time capsules

The Dyffryn Arms in the Gwaun Valley — known to everyone as Bessie's — serves beer through a hatch into what is unmistakably somebody's front room, and has changed very little in living memory. The Cresselly Arms at Cresswell Quay does something similar on the creek: beer from the jug, tide lapping the wall outside, no fuss whatsoever.

The village locals

The Cambrian Inn, Solva, The Farmers Arms, St Davids and The Bishops in the same city are the everyday rooms behind the postcard villages. Tafarn Sinc at Rosebush is the outlier — a corrugated-iron pub built for a Victorian slate railway that never really arrived, painted maroon, standing in the middle of the Preselis.

What we can and can't tell you

We haven't sat in all 150. What we can do is show you every pub we hold a record for, mapped by village, with addresses, phone numbers and — where the Food Standards Agency has inspected — a verified hygiene rating.

Two practical notes that matter more here than most places. Off-season hours collapse. A pub that runs all day in August may open Thursday to Sunday evenings in February, and the smallest ones don't update anything online. Ring. And the food stops early: most village kitchens close between 8 and 9pm.

Browse every pub in Pembrokeshire by town and village, or start with the dog-friendly ones.